Baby girl's killing reveals India's crisis of gender bias



NEW DELHI // A three-month-old baby girl who police say was battered by her father because he wanted a son died yesterday, highlighting the plight of millions of India's "unwanted girls".

Neha Afreen died from cardiac arrest at a state-run hospital in Bangalore after battling for life for three days.

"We tried our best to revive Afreen but could not succeed and she succumbed to her injuries," the hospital executive Gangadhar Belawadi said.

Afreen was brought to the hospital with head injuries, abrasions and bite marks all over her body, causing national outrage that led to the arrest of her father on Monday.

"My husband was enraged with me for delivering a girl," Afreen's mother, Reshma Banu, said. "He hated her. He wanted me to get rid of the child or abandon her as he wanted a son."

Afreen's case is the latest in a string of incidents across India where baby girls have been abandoned, tortured or killed because they were unwanted.

"The cruelty against girls is crossing all limits," Ranjana Kumari, the director of the non-profit Centre for Social Research, said.

"We need to do a lot more to sensitise the society towards the worth of girls and severely punish people guilty of such crimes."

In March, an abandoned two-year-old girl died at a New Delhi hospital after suffering horrific injuries, including broken arms and a smashed skull.

The girl, named Falak or "Sky" by the media, was hailed as a miracle child after showing signs of improvement following five gruelling operations but she later died of a heart attack.

Last week, a newborn baby girl in the western city of Jodhpur was abandoned while her parents fought for the custody of a baby boy handed to them by mistake. The parents insisted the girl was not their child and only accepted her after 11 days when the results of a DNA test were shown to them.

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

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